Improved Approximation Algorithm for k-level Uncapacitated Facility Location Problem (with Penalties)

We study the k-level uncapacitated facility location problem (k-level UFL) in which clients need to be connected with paths crossing open facilities of k types (levels). In this paper we first propose an approximation algorithm that for any constant k, in polynomial time, delivers solutions of cost at most α _k times OPT, where α _k is an increasing function of k, with (lim _{kto infty } alpha _{k} = 3). Our algorithm rounds a fractional solution to an extended LP formulation of the problem. The rounding builds upon the technique of iteratively rounding fractional solutions on trees (Garg, Konjevod, and Ravi SODA’98) originally used for the group Steiner tree problem. We improve the approximation ratio for k-level UFL for all k ≥ 3, in particular we obtain the ratio equal 2.02, 2.14, and 2.24 for k = 3,4, and 5.